Toddler and Preschool Hands-On Alphabet Learning Activities

It’s so much fun to incorporate alphabet learning activities into our every day reading and activities. Every day items and even garbage materials can easily be re-purposed into engaging hands on activities for my toddler and preschooler! Alphabet learning is the most important pre-literacy skill to introduce to them.

Hands-On Alphabet Playing

It is fun to play in general with alphabet activities. Here are a few favorites.

• A to Z Monster Feeding
• An Alphabet of Community Helpers
• Alphabet Recognition Sticker Tree
• ABC Clothes Line
• ABC Letter Tile Templates
• ABC Peg People
• ABC Felt Letter Pillows (I showed these in progress on Instagram!)
• ABC Letter Cookies (post to come!)
• ABC Dominoes
• ABC Puzzles
• ABC Flashcards (Get his and the two above in a ABC Bundle)
• Toddler Blocks Play Ideas

See also our favorite ABC books!

Learn More Ideas for Teaching the Alphabet

Katie at Gift of Curiosity has a PhD in child development and she has discovered a passion for teaching kids the alphabet! On her blog, she shares how teaching the alphabet is the single best way to prepare your little ones for literary success.  She also has a video with tips on how to approach teaching your children the alphabet, with what to look for at each stage of life.

I love reading her comments because it really strikes a chord on things I’ve always suspected. For example, do you know that you should introduce letter names and letter sounds at the same time? There is no evidence that it is better to teach just the letter names or just the letter sounds before the other.

Over all, though, the most important thing is to expose your children to the alphabet. Katie provides hands-on ideas on how to do so in her new ebook, 101 Ways to Teach the Alphabet, along with hundreds of pages of printables to use in her activities.

This is a book for parents, caregivers, teachers, and anyone else working with children ages 2+ who are learning to identify letter shapes, names, and sounds as well as to write letters and match uppercase and lowercase letters.

Get these amazing hands-on ideas in Katie’s new book, 101 Ways to Teach the Alphabet, through ebook or Amazon.

This book includes the tools you need to support a child’s letter learning progress from toddlers through early elementary school, including:

• 101 fun, creative, multi-sensory, and developmentally appropriate activities for helping children learn their letters, each with a complete description accompanied by full-color photographs
• More than 800 pages of printable alphabet materials to accompany the activities in the book
• “How to” ideas for making letter learning fun, multi-sensory, and relevant to your child